


it all creeps in

by hopeisathingwithwings



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Au—not canon, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Knights of Ren - Freeform, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non con drug use once, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Not today, Oral Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Power Imbalance, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo - Freeform, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Voyeurism, We Die Like Men, but not Kylo’s doing because he has an enthusiastic consent kink, i will get better at tagging someday, kind of? Voyeurism light?, more tags to come, slight praise kink, what else?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:54:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25404181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeisathingwithwings/pseuds/hopeisathingwithwings
Summary: She almost misses their entrance; their black garments fade into the shadows, their faces serious, their movements soundless. The other patrons move out of their path, part around the group in silence. The whole group—seven in all—settle around the main stage, servers rushing to take their drink orders. Five men, two women; their heights and builds and colorings differ, but they move as though they are branches of the same tree, digits on the same hand, like if one were to be attacked, another might bleed.Rey doesn’t know who they are, only that every hair on her arms is standing on end, her mouth suddenly dry. Without thinking, she pushes as hard as she can:stay away, stay away, stay away, stay away.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 37
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2020 is the worst and I think we all deserve a nice, long, smoldering Adam Driver stare. Don’t you?

The sand gets everywhere, creeps in. Under layers of clothes. In the back of her throat. Places she’d rather not mention.

It seems like she would have gotten used to it, all those years of grit getting where it doesn’t belong, but she hasn’t. She still hates it like it’s the first time.

Or maybe it’s just Plutt’s. Or this backwater outpost. Or the entire kriffing planet.

There has to be somewhere that isn’t here. Somewhere without burning, shifting, stubborn sand. Somewhere.

She dreams of it some nights: an island covered with lush green, surrounded by miles and miles of shimmering turquoise water. She can almost taste the heavy, damp air in her lungs, the smell of it earthy with a slightly metallic tang.

_Rain _ —she thinks it might smell like rain.

Waking always hurts worse after those dreams, and she learns to dread the temporary escape from reality, learns how it’s unattainable promise leaves her raw, empty for days.

There is no rain here and no escape. She knows she should learn this lesson, but the hope creeps in. 

********  
  


The dunes shift. Not daily, unless a major windstorm whips across the landscape, altering everything. Just in little ways. Ways that might confuse anyone less familiar, anyone who has not proven themselves time and again, picking their way across the temperamental terrain. 

Rey proves herself daily, and the desert—cruel and uncaring as it is—shares some of its smallest secrets: places where the ground is hardest packed and easiest to travel, little landmarks to orient oneself by, the particular scent of an impending sandstorm. The desert would kill her in a moment—strip her to bones and grind away at them until she is lost within the blazing, gritty sea—but it gives her these things anyway. It may be the only kindness Rey has known.

She is grateful for it, as she picks her way across the sand, headed for Plutt’s, the night air rapidly cooling as the sun melts into the horizon. The light of the outpost is dim, but she heads toward it unerringly, her long, lean legs navigating the sink and shift of the sands with practiced ease.

Plutt has been after her to move out of her hidden home in the dunes, move closer to the outpost, maybe even into his tenement, but she knows what that would mean, how he would press that advantage until he had her gripped tight in his sweaty little fist, so she shakes her head and makes the long trip here every evening, and goes back again every morning.

There will be a day when he doesn’t accept that quiet refusal. But she doesn’t think about that if she can help it.

That is a lesson she’s learned well after fifteen years in the shifting desert landscape—focus too much on tomorrow and you’ll end up neck-deep in quicksand today. No, better to make it through now, better to live in the current problems, than borrow sorrows from the murky future. They’ll be here soon enough.

She’s thinking this as she reaches the huddled group of ramshackle buildings that is Niima Outpost. The emptiness of the desert follows her, seems to infect the place with a hollowness, a hunger. The feeling settles over the buildings and their inhabitants as thoroughly as the red-gold dust that blows in in the wind. Maybe that’s why Plutt’s is so popular, because it is about feeding appetites, because it offers the most rudimentary semblance of connection.

Whatever the reason, it is the only well-tended building in town, its window-less facade built of thick blocks of red-brown stone to keep out the heat. Sand gets in, of course; not even Unkar Plutt can stop the sand.

Hefting her bag more firmly across her back, Rey ducks through the employee entrance and makes her way down a dimly lit hallway to the small, gray locker room. It’s empty, and she can just hear the quiet clink of glass from the main floor, the scrape of chairs being pulled out and pushed in.

Plutt’s is not a place for chatter, generally. Sure, some of the guests like to talk to the performers, but that’s usually meant for one set of ears only. Some customers bring friends and get carried away, made bold with booze and an audience, but those are usually the out-of-towners, here to gawk at the local spectacle. The majority of the patrons simply watch, or if they do more, they pay for the privilege and do it behind closed doors.

In the darkness, Rey strips off layers of protective clothing, shaking sand from them before tucking them into her allotted locker space.

This used to be the hardest part. She thought it would be standing naked in front of strangers, seeing them tuck coins and folded paper credits into the lockbox in front of her platform, feeling their eyes crawling over every part of her like so many invisible ants.But it wasn’t. In the end, she didn’t mind the looking so much—it is just skin, just a body like everyone else has. No, the worst part has always been the silent, personal reckoning as she removes that final layer, the quiet amplifying the ugly voice in her head that whispers that this is all she is good for, all she can hope for. The voice that tells her she should stop resisting and accept the inevitability of the next step, the step she has not allowed herself to take yet.

She doesn’t think less of those who have taken that step. She knows some took it by choice, others out of desperation. It is their business, not hers.

It is only that, growing up, she had thought it would be different for her. Had hoped, at least. Something stubborn in her insists that it still could be.

So she does not take that step. Not yet. Instead she steps from the locker room, through a shadowy back hall, and emerges onto her platform, the soft spotlight almost blinding after the darkness backstage.

Hers is only one of many raised stages lining the perimeter of the main floor; most are occupied already, each featuring only one individual. Each is different. Some are naked, like Rey, while others wear costumes that they will remove slowly throughout the night. Some are posed carefully, while others lounge informally or occupy complicated sets, completing practiced routines.

On the central stage, a man and a woman rut together silently, their bodies moving in time to some kind of internal beat, skins slick with sweat. The woman, Rey sees, is tied in place, her limbs stretched in an X, so that it is only the man who really moves, who controls the interaction. The crowd around them stares, shifts in their seats, shoves money into the little metal boxes stationed around the pair.

The center stage is good money, if you want it. Plutt plans the pairings, as he does every scenario in the sideshow. He is the worst, but he knows what sells.

Rey is glad that, for now, she is not what sells.

Instead, she spends her time reclined on a cream-colored, overstuffed chaise, her tan skin a striking contrast to the pale, crushed velvet. She tugs her hair down from the three buns it had been neatly confined it, letting her chestnut waves fall across her shoulders, flow down her small, round breasts. Laying back, she waits.

Not long.

The first man to wander over is seventy if he’s a day, stooped with labor, with the crushing weight of reality. His lined face is tanned dark by the sun, his whiskers bristle-like and gray. His watery blue eyes hungrily trace the peaks of her breasts, the hollows of her hipbones, the soft curls at the apex of her thighs. His gnarled finger stroke, as if against his will, across his own crotch—once, twice, a third time. His breathing hitches a little, his thin hips jerk against his hand.

_Enough_ , she thinks.

“You aren’t interested in more,” she whispers to the older man—knowing that he’ll obey in the same way she knows the voice of the desert as it murmurs its secrets—“but you are pleased with me, and you’ll tip for what you saw.”

For a moment, he looks dazed, unfocused, his hand dropping from his dick to dangle awkwardly at his side. But just for a moment, a heartbeat. Too fast for Plutt to see. All Plutt sees is that hand dropping coins into the lockbox, the man wandering to the next platform, where Kira snaps a thin leather whip enticingly in his direction.

Unkar has never been able to figure out why no one will touch the girl. He’s sent his own men to her with orders to report back, but none of them returned with satisfactory answers.  _She was lovely_ , they say;  _a good girl_ , they say. But none of them touched her, none of them tasted her.   


Still, he can’t complain about the tips she brings in—even if he’d like to—so he just watches as customer after customer looks and leaves, feeling more and more frustrated with his inability to capitalize on what he senses could be even bigger profits.

Rey knows this, knows it like he has whispered it all against her ear. But he won’t act. For now.

So she stays. For now.   


*******   
  


The night is a blur of faces, an endless parade of humanity. She nudges them each along when she worries they might do more than look or when she begins to feel uncomfortable. 

She finds in so many of them hurts she wishes she could heal, stories that take root somewhere in her chest, aching. This, she thinks, is actually the worst part. 

They come to her:

The small, delicate woman, about her age, who stares with shame and naked desire written on her soft, round features. She apologizes to Rey three times during the fifteen minutes she stands in front of her, leaving of her own accord, walking straight to the door like she’s running from something, tears hot on her cheeks. 

The dark-eyed young man with narrow, pinched features whose friend calls him a virgin and urges him to “just fuck the whore and get it over with,” even while something breaks behind those big brown eyes. 

The tall blonde woman whose painted red lips barely move as she whispers all of the things she wants to show this girl on the chaise—things beautiful in their fervor and softness—her eyes full of a strength and stubbornness that mirrors Rey’s. She never does more than whisper.

She tries not to carry these people with her, but it is as though she can feel them even as they walk away, even from the other side if the room, even as they walk out into the freezing desert night.

If this these were the only sort of patrons, the job might not be so bad.

But there is also the man—stocky, with flinty grey eyes, he smells like sour wine—who grabs for her without any preamble, who she barely catches before his thick fingersbrush against her.

A big bearded man who says he wants fuck her corpse. 

A red haired woman who tries to spit on her.

The strain of the pushing them all away, of the constant wariness, of the unwanted pangs of empathy—it’s exhausting, so that laying on that chaise is suddenly harder than she could ever have imagined when she took this job a year ago. The weariness is bone deep—soul deep—it almost blocks out the grunts of pain and pleasure that echo through the room, only now starting to dwindle as the crowd thins.

The night is almost over. Rey’s tiny shack is calling, though even the thought of the trek there makes her feel leaden. She struggles to stay awake, knowing precisely what could happen if she were to close her eyes and drift—

She almost misses their entrance; their black garments fade into the shadows, their faces serious, their movements soundless. The other patrons move out of their path, part around the group in silence. The whole group—seven in all—settle around the main stage, servers rushing to take their drink orders. Five men, two women; their heights and builds and colorings differ, but they move as though they are branches of the same tree, digits on the same hand, like if one were to be attacked, another might bleed too.

Rey doesn’t know who they are, only that every hair on her arms is standing on end, her mouth suddenly dry. Without thinking, she pushes as hard as she can:  _stay away, stay away, stay away, stay away_.

A head snaps toward her.

Whiskey-dark eyes scan the perimeter in her direction, then turn back to the group. She sees his lips move, tries to read the words there, but his dark, shoulder-length waves fall forward, obscuring his face.

Then he stands.

And something slow and molten and heady rolls through Rey.

He is big—too big—the kind of big that blocks entire doorways, that blots out the sun. Broad chest, thick thighs, shoulders that stretch the limits of the dark knit shirt—every part of him seems built for power, like an apex predator stalking through a savannah somewhere. Stalking toward her.

Beautiful. Deadly. 

_Go away, go away, go away . _

He cocks his head, eyes fluttering closed for a moment, like he’s listening to a song only he hears. When his eyes open, they are filled with something dark and determined, as they narrow, studying first Kira, then Rey, then the next platform where Finn stands. 

_Go away, go away, go away_ .

A small smirk twists his lips— _lovely, soft, plush lips_ —and he saunters toward Rey, who shrinks into the plush cushion of her chaise, trying to imagine she’s invisible, trying with all her will to shove him away. 

He stops just short of her platform, his gaze making a slow trek up and down her naked body, the scorching intensity of it making her heart stutter in her chest, her teeth dig into the soft flesh of her lower lip. She has been naked for hours, but now she feels it, now she fights the urge to cover herself with her hands, to angle her body away. But Plutt would be on her in a minute, so she grits her teeth and holds still. It is just one man. One man she can’t control. One man who studies her like he can see all her secrets. 

She finds she cannot look away from her face. It’s beautiful—all contradictions—hard-edged jaw and soft, full lips; ivory skin and heavy, dark brows. His prominent, straight nose, the slight asymmetry of his features, none of it should work, but they only make the long planes of his face more compelling.

And his eyes.

When his eyes find hers, it’s like plunging into a black, burning sea; she’s drowning in it, on fire with it. There is hunger and power and pain in the darkness that floods every corner of her body.

She yanks herself from their depths, and his eyes are wide, lips parted, like maybe he saw something, maybe he felt it too.

“You—“ her voice comes out too breathy. She clears her throat and tries again, “Y—You’re pleased with what you’ve seen, but you have to move on. You have no more interest in me.”

_Away.  Go.  Leave_ .

He doesn’t move, and when he speaks, it is rolling thunder, low and ominous and powerful: “On the contrary, little one, I find myself very interested.”

Panic grips her. She must be too tired—that’s the only explanation. No one has ever ignored her push, swatted it away like a cobweb blown on the breeze. No one but this man. The reality of her situation, her utter lack of control, grips her, pins her in place.

She waits—pulse pounding—for whatever he’ll do next.

He does not move. Not when the lights flicker to signal the end of the night, not when his comrades join him, their eyes drinking her in, curiosity written on their faces, not when she stands and retreats into the darkness of the backstage hall, heart pounding in her throat.

She can almost feel him standing there, dark eyes riveted on her even through the wall, the terrifying thrill of it leaving her skin humming as she dresses and flees into the pale early morning light. 

She slides down dunes, picks her way across shifting sand, but she sees only his face, only his intense amber gaze.

Rey tries to shake him as she climbs, exhausted, into her cramped, lumpy bed.  _She’ll never see him again. He was passing through and anything she felt, anything she feared, was only in her mind. She is no one. A face. A body._

She must imagine the voice, like a caress against her cheek, gentle and rumbling and intimate:

_But not to me_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this far!! I have more planned, but knowing whether people are interested helps me know if something is worth pursuing or should be dropped.
> 
> Stay safe and stay well 💜💜💜


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shadow. An inky stain defying the warm glow of the sun.
> 
> A shadow shaped like a man, tall and broad and powerful. A shadow that cocks its head at her, that stares at her with unseen eyes.
> 
> It doesn’t belong here.
> 
> He doesn’t belong here.
> 
> He reaches out a hand .
> 
> She wakes up with sweat coating her body, heart thudding loudly, her hand extended into the darkness of her room, trembling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to anyone who read, gave (left? bequeathed?) kudos, or commented 💜 
> 
> My homework for writing this chapter was watching Adam Driver gifs, which is why this took a bit. The man is distracting.

_She dreams of the island again, but not from above, not from a distance._

_ Instead, her bare feet dig into the dark, rich soil as she walks the tree line, watching the shore. The waves are louder, up close, their crests decorated with white foam as they roll in. When she breathes deeply, she can taste the salt in the heavy, humid air. There are flashes of color in the dark, leafy canopy—a vivid pink feather here, a glimpse of bright yellow wings there. She follows their strange birdsongs deeper into the lush press of green. _

_ So much green.  _

_ It fills her, lifts her. She cannot remember why she’d been unsettled, upset; she runs her hand through waxy emerald leaves, brushes her fingertips against trunks wrapped with twisting green vines, and thinks nothing could ever be wrong, not surrounded by all of this life. _

_ The sound reaches her first, a steady, thundering roar that calls to something deep inside, that obliterates her hard-won caution. Pace quickening, she pushes forward through dense vegetation until she is emerging from the trees beside a large pool of sparkling, clear water. At the far edge torrents of water rush over the edge of a high, rocky cliff face, the power of it sending clouds of mist into the air, rainbows flickering into and out of existence at the edges. _

_ She takes an involuntary step toward the falls, wanting to feel the water pounding against her skin, needing to feel the relentless rush press her down, cold and brutal and brilliant. She takes another step. Another. Another. She’s thigh-deep in the pool—the cold wet raising goosebumps across her bare golden skin, droplets from the spray gathering on her face, her breasts, her stomach—when she sees it out of the corner of her eye. _

_ A shadow. An inky stain defying the warm glow of the sun.  _

_ A shadow shaped like a man, tall and broad and powerful. A shadow that cocks its head at her, that stares at her with unseen eyes. _

_It doesn’t belong here._

_ He doesn’t belong here. _

_ He reaches out a hand . _

She wakes up with sweat coating her body, heart thudding loudly, her hand extended into the darkness of her room, trembling.  
  


*******

  
She breaks her rule that day, unable to focus on the world in front of her, her mind turning back to dark eyes and their hungry, turbulent depths. It’s those eyes she sees as she burns her hand making breakfast, in the moments before she falls face-first down a dune on the way to Plutt’s.

Spitting  out mouthfuls of red sand, Rey curses the man whose name she doesn’t even know, who she’ll never see again. 

And she’s glad she won’t. 

She is.  
  


*******  
  


She’s early to work, something she’s never been before, something she ignores now.

_It means nothing_. 

He has nothing to do with the way her skin seems to vibrate, nothing to do with the faint flush creeping up her neck. He certainly has nothing to do with the strange ache she’s felt all day, a kind of emptiness, a sense of something missing. 

_Nothing_. 

Finn is in the locker room, his warm brown eyes rimmed in black liner, dusted with gold. A tight smile curves his lips as she folds her clothes neatly and brushes the stubborn sand from her bare skin, strain darkening his normally friendly expression. 

He’s the one who tells her, voice hushed, eyes darting to the shadows in the corners of the locker room, like anyone might be hiding there:  _The Knights of Ren_.  That’s who they were, who _he_ was.

Everyone knows the stories; everyome hears the whispers. It’s not a secret; Snoke’s personal attack dogs leave a trail of bodies, act without mercy. But speaking of them feels like bad luck, like you might unknowingly conjure them.

Finn had a run in with them once, back when he lived in the city, and barely escaped alive. He doesn’t tell her, but she can see it. The ghosts crowd him, the fear hums through his mind.

She wraps the terrified man in a quick hug; they are not quite friends—no, both have too many walls, too little trust for that—but there is a similarity in their spirits, a warmth between them that makes her think that, in another world, they could be close.

“I’m sure they won’t come back,” she says quietly, “you could go home for the night—say you have something catching. Plutt probably won’t argue.”

A terse shake of the head. “You know how it is—don’t work, don’t eat,” his voice is resigned, his mouth grim as he tugs on a pair of snug, shiny gold shorts, dusts his chest with luminescent powder.

She nods. She does know how it is. That’s how she ended up here.

There’s nothing more to say, so she gives his arm a gentle squeeze and closes her locker, “See you out there.” She heads into the dark backstage area, taking deep calming breaths, trying to steal herself for the long evening of deflecting unwanted attention, the inevitable tidal wave of other people’s emotions.Letting a serene mask fall over her features, she steps out from behind the thick curtain, onto her platform. 

And freezes.

He is already waiting for her, plush lips twisting into a half-smirk at her wide eyes, at the way she stands staring. Thick biceps criss-cross a broad chest as he lets his gaze wander slowly—so very slowly—down her body. She feels her nipples harden to pink pearls; without meaning to, she presses her thighs together, stops breathing.

His smirk widens, and she realizes he has dimples.

Kylo Ren has kriffing dimples like canyons.

And soft pillowy lips.

And eyes that crinkle at the corners when he looks at her.

It’s more than should be allowed, makes it harder to remember that he’s a hardened killer, a violent maniac who she should want nothing to do with—who she wants nothing to do with. 

“You standing tonight?” he rumbles, amusement making his voice warmer, silkier, one hand raising to press a long finger against his smirk.

Glaring, she moves to her chaise, aware of how close to him it brings her—he could touch her if he wanted. She tries to imagine how those long fingers would feel against her bare skin, tangling in her hair.

“Leave,” she snaps, trying to put all of her will behind the word, trying to ignore the confusing pull toward his black-clad body. _She could climb into his arms, wrap her legs around his waist. She could—_ “Leave now.”

“I don’t think I will,” he says, leaning a fraction of an inch closer, “and you should know  _ that _ won’t work on me.”

She ducks her head, cheeks reddening at having been caught, at the undeniable desire still swimming through her—to know more, to understand his motives in searching her out again. His eyes haunted her, his shadow reached for her in a dream; there is something building between them like a rubber band being stretched to its limit, and she needs to understand.  


She knows she shouldn’t follow this path, but her life has been a never ending series of denials, of decisions based always on necessity, survival. Some quiet voice whispers that she deserves answers, deserves what she _wants_ just this once. 

Th e raging seas she nearly drowned in the night before—violent and passionate and powerful—call to her like a siren, and she leans forward, her eyes locked on his, trying to slip inside his thoughts.

Maybe there is a flicker of dark water, churned by howling winds. Maybe there is a flash of wide hazel eyes and a beautiful white power that feels like _peace_ and _home_ and—

Then there is nothing, only a wall of smooth obsidian, extending into infinity in all directions.

She shoves against it, beads of sweat dotting the bridge of her nose, muscles tensed. She throws herself into the cold stone again and again, while around her dancers gyrate to quiet music, beautiful people tease and tempt, coins clink together. It all fades and there is only the wall and the dark seas she knows rage just behind it if she could—

His eyes narrow, flash, and she can see the man that strikes fear into his prey, can feel cool fingers of fear sliding down her spine. He doesn’t raise his voice, but she feels the command in each word: “Stop. Enough. That won’t work now either.”  


It’s a rejection, a rebuff that reminds her of her place in the world, bringing her back to the red grit that still clings to her skin in places, to the moans from the center stage where a man’s red hair bobs at waist height between Poe’s legs, to the emptiness and brevity of everything that happens in this sad, desperate place.   


It is a rebuke of the weakness she’s indulged, the strange hope she let find a foothold; she breaks his gaze, staring determinedly across the room at Finn’s empty platform, jaw clenched tight.

If she ignores him, maybe he’ll leave.

“I won’t,” he murmurs, promise rumbling in his voice. “And I don’t think you want me to. Even if I won’t let you pick through my brain.”

She won’t respond, won’t give him the pleasure, instead letting the silence settle between them, thick and electric and alive. Tonight again she feels her nakedness, is conscious of every inch of exposed golden skin, every soft, sensitive part of her bare to him. It doesn’t help that his molten gaze never strays from her, sings with a hunger that feels different than the others who come to the club: more personal somehow, more inevitable.

_He’s a murderer_ ,  she reminds herself. She chants it, breathes it like oxygen, inscribes it on her bones.

It makes him scowl. So she doesn’t stop. 

Minutes slip by, an hour, and no one else approaches, their eyes seeming to slide past her platform as though it didn’t exist. Like she doesn’t exist. Like she’s been erased from their thoughts. Like someone is pushing them away.

Every fifteen minutes, he shoves more credits into her lockbox.

She should be mad, probably, but all she can feel is a vague relief of having someone else be vigilant for once, and something she won’t name, something that awakens in her chest, stretches, purrs.

It feels dangerous, like a luxury she has never been able to afford. 

_No_ .

She doesn’t want him, has made a life out of not wanting anyone. She wants food and shelter and enough savings to quit this shit job someday. She doesn’t want a man, not even one whose big hands could encircle her waist completely, whose eyes make her feel seen, whose mouth looks like it was made to move across her skin, taste every part of her.

His pupils blow like she said it out loud, and he leans  forward, face hovering so near her she can see every individual long, dark eyelash, could count every birthmark sprinkled across his pale skin. His breath whispers against her skin and she stiffens, knowing he will touch her now, that she has no power here, not with him.  


Her eyes flutter closed, so she misses the way his lips part, the way his half-lidded gaze devours her before he murmurs: “I won’t touch you until you ask me to. I can be patient.”

Her eyes snap open, embarrassment pricking. “You’ll be waiting a long time,” she hisses, leaning in too, cheeks hot with anger and confusion.

“Maybe, maybe not,” he shrugs, irritatingly calm, in control.

“No one touches me.” It’s a truth, but it sounds like a challenge.

“No one?”

She doesn’t answer, but knows he sees it anyway, like he sees everything.

He just looks hungrier.

That look does strange things to her anger, melts it, forges something new. She ignores it, forces her focus to other, safer realms. “Why are you here anyway?”

He settles back a little, a mask falling over his face, “Business.”

“Your business is lurking?” she presses, “Giving away credits? Keeping everyone safe from seeing my bits?”

His mouth quirks to the side, “I’d very much like to make your bits my business. But, no, the others are attending to it now.”

Is it her imagination, the way his gaze flicks toward the empty platform just a bit further along the wall? Or maybe the obsidian wall wavers just long enough for her to glimpse dark brown eyes, broad, high cheekbones, gold dusted skin.

Horror washes over her and she presses back into the plush cushions of the chair, trying to escape him, “Finn.” She can’t move, can’t draw attention, but her mind screams for her to do something. Attack. Flee. Anything.

“The traitor,” he snaps, lips pressed tightly together.

“You better not touch him.” She leans forward, knuckles white where they grip the edge of the chair, hazel eyes hard. “Don’t you fucking touch him!”

“I am touching no one right now...I cannot speak for the others, though.”

“You—you’re a monster!”

“Yes,” he whispers, eyes trained on hers, “I am. But I am not a thief, not a liar, not a traitor—unlike your dear Finn. If he is being punished, it is because of his own actions; he knew what his choices meant.”

“Please.” She doesn’t know what exactly she’s asking, why he would ever listen. She is just some girl. She is no one. He will kill Finn, who someday might have been her friend, and then he will leave.

_ Like everyone . _

_ She is always so alone. _

Kylo scrubs a hand through his dark hair, something like a growl leaving his lips.

Something whispers. The desert maybe. Some quiet instinct. It doesn’t matter.

It whispers that she is not powerless here. 

The room is filling with people, Plutt is somewhere upstairs, undoubtedly watching, but everything seems to quiet as she leans back, one brow arched, bottom lip caught between her teeth. He’s thrown, his body tensed against her next move, his hands kneading the fabric over his thighs, like he’s stopping himself from reaching out. 

“Why aren’t you with them?” she asks, that invisible voice humming through her. She lets one hand trail lightly across her stomach, tracing little patterns against the sensitive skin.

His brows furrow, eyes darken, as he watches her fingertips, “What?”

“They’re hurting Finn and you’re here. Why?”

Maybe she’s misjudged. Maybe she’s wrong, about to be put in her place again.  


“I felt you last night from the moment I walked in. I dreamed about you.”

She can tell he doesn’t want to say the words, that they’ve left him as naked as she is.  


He didn’t ask for this, didn’t want to feel this strange connection.

She nods. She feels it too.

“Is whatever Finn did worth it?” Without fully knowing how, if it’s even possible, she invites him in. A blur of images— _her knees falling open to him, his head buried at their apex, his pale body covering her, caging her against the chaise as he buries himself in her, her face a mask of wonder and bliss. How much she wants him, without reason, without scruple. How she’s wanted no one else._

_The knowledge that_ — _if Finn is hurt—he will never touch her_.

“You know I could take whatever I want.” 

He could. She knows this. She maybe even wants it. But she stays the course. “Then you’d be just like everyone else who comes here. Just another john.”

He doesn’t like that. His jaw works in silence for a minute, lips rolling. Then, “And if we let him go?“

She takes a deep breath, “If you swore you’d let him go free forever? Then I would want you to touch me. Because I’ve wanted that since I saw you last night—I—I’d _give_ you whatever you wanted.” Shepulls her knees up a little, lets them part a fraction of an inch.

”I don’t think you know what you’re offering,” he rumbles, one finger trailing lightly up the outside of her leg, making the emptiness inside Rey throb. “What is it you think I want? A quick fuck in the VIP room? You on your knees taking me in this pretty pink mouth?” His nail bites into the soft skin just slightly, making the breath catch in her throat.

Yes. That is what she thinks he wants, what she wants too. Finn safe. This man touching all of her. It’s wrong, maybe makes her a monster too, but she can’t seem to care.

He smirks, pulls out his phone, a sleek black thing dwarfed by the hand that grips it. There is a quiet conversation, his voice terse and uncompromising, before he hangs up and stows the device away again. “He’s mostly unharmed, and should be here—as proof—shortly.” 

Relief washes over her, cool and calming, but it is short-lived. Her promise hangs in the air, burns her skin where his fingers had touched her. 

Time creeps by and Finn emerges from backstage, moving gingerly but whole, safe. His eyes land on Kylo, on Rey, confusion and relief and worry clouding their depths. For a moment, it seems like he might come over, then he turns, like he doesn’t remember she’s there, smiles like his burdens have been erased from his mind.

She doesn’t have to wonder how that happened. She’s learning the answer is always man in front of her.

A hand, warm and large, settles against the column of her throat, the thumb stroking the sensitive skin just behind her ear. The movement sends frissons dancing across her nerves, makes her bare her throat to him for more. More of this. More of him.

Kylo leans in, his lips moving against her jaw, working their way to her mouth, the languid pace maddening and perfect. He pauses for a moment, their breaths mingled, their lips so close she can almost taste him, needs to taste him—

The lights flash. 

He pulls away, and she lets out a small noise of distress; a smirk twists his soft lips.

”Tomorrow.” And he turns and leaves her staring after him, feeling his voice in her core.

Her head is a mess of _want_ and _shouldn’t_ and _tomorrow_. She almost doesn’t hear the voice telling her the boss wants to see her. Almost.  
  


*******  
  


Plutt’s office may have once been habitable, perhaps even pleasant. The walls are all dark wood, imported from somewhere where trees actually grow, the furniture is all leather and oak. But wear and neglect has left its surfaces covered in dust and old food wrappers, stained with unnamed substances; time has seen the lights so coated in dust and grime that the room is shadowed and grim. There are notes on the big desk, crude sketches of scenes that might sell, lists of credits earned and money owed. Smoke hangs in the air, clings to everyone who spends more than a moment here, a stink that can’t be shaken.

The room is a reflection of the man who lurks there. 

He sits behind the desk now, raising a hunk of dripping meat to his mouth from the tray in front of him, smacking and slurping as it disappears down his gullet. The grease clings to his fingers, slides down his chin, is wiped on a sleeve, while he watches the woman in front of him with small, glittering black eyes. Rey tries not to flinch, tries not to look too anxious.

Though not a tall man, Plutt is big—built like a barrel with legs, the growing softness around his midsection hiding his strength, but they have all seen him haul a woman out of the club by her hair for taking more than her share of the profits, they all remember how he strangled the man who’d tried to force one of the dancers to leave with him. It isn’t wise to anger Plutt.

She’d been so careful not to anger him.

“Saw Ren has taken a liking to you.”

It isn’t a question, but she shrugs in response anyway. “He paid. My tips didn’t drop.”

Plutt smiles, baring yellowed teeth, and she knows it isn’t good, whatever this is, can see something ugly, greedy whispering across his mind. “No, Ren pays well. Think how much he’ll pay to see you on the center stage.”

“No.”

“With Dameron, maybe,” he taps his greasy lips thoughtfully, “or Snap.”

“No.” She pushes, mind wild with panic.

But he’s not paying attention, his mind so full of scenarios and credits that she can’t seem to push him away from the idea. There is nothing else he thinks of, nowhere to divert his thoughts.

“Think you’re too good. You always thought that. But the only thing that’s got worth is between your legs. ”

Heat floods her face and she shakes her head. “You don’t want me on the center stage. Not with Poe, not with anyone.”

For a moment he looks uncertain. Unsteady.

Then he laughs. It’s a filthy sound.

“You’ll give it up on that stage or I’ll fire you and make sure no one in Niima ever give you work again. Your virtue worth starving for, girl?”

This moment had been long coming, like a slow-moving storm on the horizon, and she’s prepared for it. She knows her choice. “Fine. I quit.” 

Shaking with anger, face purpling, Plutt jolts to his feet, stalks from around the desk to jab a finger in her face. “I own you, Rey. You owe me everything!”

She tries to keep her head, tries to keep her voice steady: “You employed me. Now you don’t. I’m leaving.” Plutt snarls again, reaching back to press a buzzer on his desk; three men appear within seconds, stalking through the door behind Rey like a pack of hyenas, faces twisted with gruesome grins. She doesn’t know them, but she recognizes their type: mean, stupid, vicious. 

Plutt takes a breath, changing tactics, his voice softening: “You bring in good money in the sideshow—probably do better than even Kira in the center—they like that innocent shit, those big doe eyes, the blushing—“

” I won’t let—“ she starts.

But he doesn’t hear, keeps talking in that wheedling, condescending tone: ”Just need to get past the first time. Get used to it a little.” 

He snaps his grubby fingers.

It happens before she can react: hands grip her arms from behind, squeezing like it is their right to touch her, like she’s nothing. They bruise her, hold her still, and it’s just another way something is taken from her.

_She has so little left._

And she explodes.

She is fury, her body bursting with light she cannot name but knows like the sound of her own heartbeat. It burns with righteousness and years of indignities, with stubborn hope and unrelenting spirit.

It’s instinctual, the way she reaches inside, gathering the blazing white heat to her, how she thrusts it away from her, like she can push away what’s happening, like she can push the men out of existence.

There are voices yelling, bellowing in pain and panic and anger. There are bodies thrown against walls, running toward her, falling back again. Everything is chaos and noise and an unseen force that cracks through the air like a whip, that builds and builds like a roaring inferno. She will destroy them. Kill them. She will—  
  


It’s tiny, the prick.

  
But the drugs are fast.

“I knew she’d be trouble,” someone grunts, but the sound is distorted, far away, “put her in the back room for now.”   
  


*******

The world spins slowly, blurred softly around the edges. Faces pass in front of her, warm light shining from them, making sunspots in her vision. There are so many upturned faces watching her, each like a candle burning on a hearth, flames dancing in unseen breezes.

_Pretty._

_So pretty_. 

And she’s floating, bathed in that gold radiance, so light she thinks she might fly away. 

“You ok?”

The voice is nice, comes from chestnut curls and grey eyes.Not the voice she wants, but nice anyway. She tries to smile because he sounds worried and how could anyone worry when the world is so shiny and soft and lovely?

“They give you something for first time nerves?”

They are nonsensical words, growing louder and softer, rising and falling like a song. Sounds that send her mind spinning gently, dipping and spiraling though starry skies and warm sunrises.

Maybe she’s nodding—it’s hard to tell; warm hands are on her hips and that is new and distracting and she thinks maybe she doesn’t want them there. Something is on her neck—wet and hot and she tries to move away but all she can do is float, drift where the shining currents push her, and is it so bad? does it even matter? does anything matter?

She is pure light; nothing can hurt her.

And then there is nothing but warm, golden haze. Nothing but weightlessness and the knowledge she’s

drifting

away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My pinky promise: nothing will happen to Rey that is nonconsensual beyond this dubious touching. It’s not that kind of fic, for better or for worse.
> 
> Also, thanks for sticking with me through this! This year is the worst but you are the best 💜


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, you know how sometime life is just a landfill? That has been August and September.
> 
> If you are still there, you are giving 👏 me 👏 life 👏. Now let’s find out whether or not Kylo thinks it’s ok for people to mess with Rey...

He hates the desert, the relentless heat, the dust clouds hanging in the air, choking and gritty and pervasive. The sand gets everywhere; he combs it out of his dark hair each night, scrapes it off his skin. It’s like it won’t let him go.

Surely that’s why he’s felt wrong all day, why there’s been a high-pitched whine in his ears, why his lungs haven’t seemed to be able to draw a full breath. The whine, the suffocating lack of oxygen gets worse and worse, makes him feel unbalanced, drained.

It makes him worried and he is never worried. He’s killed worry, as he’s killed compassion and need and the young man he’d once been, the one with his father’s heart.

He is a red, turbulent ocean, skies above crackling with energy and fury. He is strength and anger and relentlessness.

But today he is also worried.

The others know better than to say anything, but he can feel their silent questions whizzing through the air around him like so many irritable hornets, can feel the way they send meaningful looks back and forth when they think he isn’t watching. They let their prey go the night before; it is against their natures, against years of experience. They want to understand.

It’s Ushar who finally breaks the silence, as it so often is: “Did you fuck her?”

The quiet growl in Kylo’s chest is enough response.

“Recruit her?”

Kylo glares at the small, wiry man, but he allows a small shake of his head.

“Then you killed her for resisting?” Ushar knows this isn’t the case, knows that the only reason they’re still in the kriffing desert is so Kylo can return to Plutt’s tonight. “It’s just, I’m trying to understand why the traitor is free and we have nothing to show for it, boss. You get hypnotized by the whore's tits?”

Ushar is silent then, his hands scrabbling at his throat, clawing at the invisible something that presses viciously against his windpipe, that crushes.

The others are quiet, completely still.

Kylo lets it go on for a moment too long, lets the panic gleam in Ushar’s eyes, then he releases him. "She is not your concern." Ushar nods, massaging his chest like he's trying to restart his heart. "She is-- different . It cannot be rushed." Whether he means convincing her into his bed or into Snoke's employ, it’s unclear.

No one asks. No one is eager to die today. 

Their questions clog the air, cling to him, like so many grains of sand borne by the desert’s swirling winds. They add to the suffocating weight in his chest.

It’s too early to head to Plutt’s.

He goes anyway.

*******

Inside the club the air is thick, heavy in his lungs. The sounds of pleasure, commerce, and fantasy blend together into a pulsating, jarring cacophony that makes his stomach turn, that makes the whole world feel like it’s shifting off its axis.

His mind reaches out for hers almost instinctually, but the action only intensifies the dizzying sensation, only makes him feel as though the ceiling is beneath his feet and he is floating through spirals of colors and light and—

_ No _ .

His mind grounds him, an iron anchor; the ocean inside him—wild and murky and full of flames—buoys him up, the currents wrapping around him, their relentless, violent waves washing away some of the haze, some of the strange floating feeling.

None of this makes sense. He has to figure out what’s going on, what is making him feel so ill and unsteady. He has to—

He sees her on the main stage.

She is all long, lean, tan legs and big, doe-y hazel eyes. Her hair is loose, the chestnut cloud framing her face like halo. She’s naked, wrapped only in soft golden light that kisses her here, casts shadows there. She is a study in contradictions: power and vulnerability, innocence and passion. Complicated, messy, beautiful.

Perfect.

_ His. _

He wants to end every person who has seen her like this, wants to pry their eyes from their sockets and burn every thought of her from their minds, obliterate every memory. It’s stupid and possessive and archaic, so he makes himself stay still—a dark shadow at the periphery of the soft stage light—but he feels it anyway, the rumbling voice inside that can only growl _mine_ , over and over, equal parts promise and threat.

He can only watch her hungrily, can only push away the worst of the people who encircle her, the darkest of the predators. He should be able to do more, should be able to clear a three mile radius around her beautiful bare body, but something isn’t right, that sticky haze is creeping back in, making him feel drunk or high or both.

He thinks she might feel it too. There’s something about those eyes as they slide vacantly across the audience’s upturned faces, something about the way her hands hang limply at her sides. It pricks at him, the _wrongness_ , it makes him take a step forward, wanting to go to her, needing to feel her mind brush against his—whole and strong and brimming with light.

Then Kylo sees the man: stocky, olive-skinned, handsome. Naked.

_No one touches me. No one._

He reminds himself over and over again like a talisman against what he knows is coming, like he can pretend it isn’t happening.

The man approaches her, lowering his smiling lips toward her ear to whisper quietly to her, settling his unworthy hands at the gentle flare of her hips; Rey only smiles vaguely. When the man starts mouthing at her neck she stands like a beautiful golden statue of a goddess, accepting worship without acknowledging it.

He will kill this man. He will rip his limbs from his body. He will—

It is so quiet he almost misses it. Words slurred and mumbled. Words nearly lost to the wrongness that clouds her mind, his mind.

_ Don’t like—don’t want—can’t— _

She sounds lost. Scared. Powerless.

Understanding is a tidal wave, crashing over him, fury and hatred drowning out everything in the world except her. It drowns out the roar that tears from his throat as he bounds forward, a pulse of violent energy rippling out from his center. It drowns out the screams and bellows of the patrons knocked flat by the surge, who scurry out of his path as he leaps onto the center stage. It drowns out whatever the man says as he cowers on his knees behind Rey, forced there by weight he cannot see or fight.

In one easy movement, she’s in Kylo’s arms, cradled against his chest. He holds her like something precious—he doesn’t understand this pull, this need, this call—and turns to the one who had touched her, who had put his mouth on her, who had drugged her.

Power vibrates in the air around him. It’s thick in this place of passion and greed; even with the secondhand effects of the drugs pumping through her blood, he can feel how it saturates the air, how it lurks in the dark recesses of the patrons’ minds, waiting for him to wield it. It’s simple, drawing the power to him, focusing that molten energy on the pathetic creature begging for its life. It’s like crushing an ant beneath his thumb, plucking a weed from soil. He will take pleasure in it.

_ He didn’t—not his fau—please— _

He wants to ignore it, let the rage surging within him take its due in blood. The place should burn. Everyone inside should bleed for what was done to her. If it had been anyone else—Vicrul, Ushar, even Snoke—he would let his rage flow, lethal and indiscriminate. 

But it’s her. 

She is different somehow. She _matters_.

So he stops, his jaw working, lips pressed thin. He listens with ever fiber of his being, listens across the intricate web that is everywhere and everything—he finds them: dark threads, fibers drenched in a rusty color like old blood He gathers the strands—they whine with guilt, they stink of cowardice—and he feels the red electricity of his own anger, feels how it surges along the threads, burning, devouring.  He doesn’t have to look to see the bodies fall to the ground, to know that crimson pours from their noses and mouths. The big, stupid brutes who had touched her.  


He spares the one responsible—the man who reeks of greed and grease—a quick death is too easy for that one.

The woman in his arms, mumbles incoherently and Kylo crushes her against his chest, soft and golden and nuzzling into the black knit of his sweater like a kitten. 

She shouldn’t trust him, shouldn’t want him. He only takes and takes. He ruins, breaks, ends. It is how he was made, how he needs to be to survive. 

Something this good, something this sweet—he can never have it, even if there is something in the blazing white light of her that makes him think  _what if_ , that whispers  _more_ . Even if there is something stirring in his chest that feels like a ghost, like a resurrection.

As if Snoke knows, as if he can feel Han’s heart awakening in Kylo’s chest, a text comes through—its sound shattering the fragile moment. It is a summons. There will be punishment for Finn’s escape. There will be pain and blood and a reminder of the order of things, then there will be a next mission. It is his reality. 

To think it could be any other way—that there is any path for him that is not made of broken glass and molten earth—is a lie. He has no future but this. 

And she can have nothing to do with it. No matter what.

_ *******_

They find Unkar Plutt in the alley behind his establishment the next morning. 

Pieces of him, anyway.

And the Knights of Ren are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be smutty times soon, I promise. Smut Scout’s honor.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all the very best of people, have I told you that recently? Absolute top-shelf humans. 
> 
> Also, I had some Kylo Ren-level angst going about the last chapter that made me not publish for a long time, but I've decided this monster gets to be what she wants to be and I'm putting this out there in the world. My instinct was to spend the next two years editing it into oblivion, but then I was like WHO CARES JUST WRITE CAUSE YOU LOVE THESE BABIES. So here it is...

Rey dreams of the island almost every night now. It is as though she wills the dreams into being. Perhaps she does. She has always been stubborn. _Like a dog with a bone,_ a voice that might be the desert and might be her mother and might be no one at all whispers.

It doesn't matter why. Not really. It matters only that the moment her eyes close she can feel the heavy, damp air kiss her skin, hear the relentless press of the waves against the shore. For months, the dreams come, and now she knows the hush of an impending rain storm like her own bated breath. She knows the hidden paths through the dense foliage like the lines that etch her palms. She knows _he_ will always be there--the shadowy shape of his broad form like a dark specter.

But, he is not the same in each dream. In some, he flees as soon as she appears, losing her in the shaded recesses of the forest. It reminds her of when he disappeared, leaving strewn body parts in an alley, leaving her on Finn's doorstep, leaving something aching in her chest that she pretends is anger. 

Some nights, he trails behind her, a dark shadow on the peripheral of her vision. Though she cannot see his eyes, she feels them watching, memorizing, devouring. 

Some nights they sit, not touching but close, and trade quiet words: 

> _You left me_ , she whispers.
> 
> His response sounds tired, resigned. _I had to._
> 
> _You didn't._
> 
> _I did. I'm a monster. I work for monsters._
> 
> A pause. _I don't care._
> 
> _You should--I do._

She speaks to the shade and dreams that somewhere the man hears her, that the dry desert winds might carry her words to wherever he is, might take root somewhere in his chest and burrow deep. It seems only fair; his memory clings to her like the sand: she sees his hungry, amber eyes everywhere, hears the rumble of his voice whispering in her ears, feels his arms wrapped around her like she's something precious--

And she's never been precious, not to anyone, so she dreams of the island, of the man who left her behind, and she does not let go. 

*******

The rain comes down in thick, soaking ropes. Cool rivulets trace paths across her bare skin, making her shiver. He sits beneath the trees, not far off, always watching. There is something in the deceptively languid way he sits, the way her skin burns with the heat of his gaze. It reminds her of another time he watched, of another place. 

She wants to know if he is real. She has to know, if only to kill the quiet, stubborn hope that grows around her heart like one of the thorny vines that twists its way around the island trees. Hope is like that; it slices her open, every raw nerve exposed and screaming. 

She has to know.

> _I'm going back to Plutt's._
> 
> _No._ His voice is grim, angry, possessive. But if he is only in her head, that is how she would make him sound, that is how she'd dream him. It isn't proof he's real. 
> 
> _It's different now. New owner. Better owner._
> 
> _No._
> 
> She glares at him, where his eyes must be in all that darkness. _Then stop me._

The rain comes down between them and maybe she sees him jump to his feet and maybe he starts toward her, but then her eyes are opening on the dim, dreary interior of her little home and she cannot know for sure. 

*******

They come, one by one. 

The first is a slight man, wiry, with eyes like flint, hair just beginning to gray at the temples. He enters the club and heads immediately to her platform, eyes intent on where she's reclined on the chaise, strides purposeful, a scythe strapped across his back, his clothes a study in black. 

She doesn't flinch away from him, as others do. He knows she can feel it, though, the darkness that crowds his mind, that threatens his soul. Too much death. Too much pleasure in those deaths. He is steeped in blood and it taints the very air around him. But she isn't afraid. 

No. There is something in her wide hazel eyes that looks almost like joy.

" _He_ doesn't want you doing this anymore," the man says without preamble. His mind is full of a tall, broad man--a man whose amber eyes snap with power and irritation. 

"Not his choice, is it?" she says quietly.

"He sent this--" the man holds out a wad of cash, "if you'll stop." It's more money than she's ever seen at once, and her fingers itch to take it, to never be hungry again, to have something that is hers, a future she might choose rather than this life she's scrapping together. 

"Tell him to give it to me himself," she whispers, the words sticking in her throat. If she took the money now, she'd never see him again and he'd be just another john who thought his money made his choices more important than her own. 

The man nods once, curt and almost militaristic, but he doesn't move. His eyes trace the curve of her bare breast, the hollow between her hip bones, almost as though he cannot help himself. "You'll not take the money?" he asks, voice gruff but strangely tender, gaze still roaming over her tan skin. "You could leave this place. It stinks like loneliness here." 

She shakes her head, a mantra running through her thoughts, through her veins, stealing her resolve, burning away the emptiness: _He was real. He will come. He was real. He will come._

She is done being lonely. 

*******

The second is a woman, tall and severe and starkly beautiful--all white-blonde hair and powerful grace. She moves around the perimeter of the room, unhurried, taking time to look, to enjoy, her red-painted lips curve into a small, private smile. Eyes follow her--some filled with lust, others with apprehension, still more with something more dangerous.

She carries no visible weapons. Perhaps she is deadly enough without them. 

When the blonde finally approaches Rey's chaise, she studies the brunette with frank curiosity. "Kylo was not pleased you refused Vicrul's money," there is amusement in the woman's voice, "but Kylo is in a shit mood most of the time now, so..." she shrugs, her broad shoulders rising and falling beneath the black silk of her blouse. 

"And he sent you to..."

"To tell you to stop. To tell you he won't come back." The words are blunt, matter-of-fact.

 _They never come back. Why would they? I am nothing, I am no one--_ her thoughts are a spiral, dizzying and disorienting, making the club and the woman and the pounding music fade to gray, like a dark sandstorm that chokes out every ray of light, every landmark. 

Long, pale fingers grasp Rey's chin--pale blue and hazel eyes meet, lock together. There is something in those eyes that makes Rey think of water, of ice; a thought slices through the chaos in Rey's mind--sharp and clear and purposeful: _What I cannot tell you is that he is lying--t_ _o you._ _To himself._

"Lying?" Rey whispers, the word almost lost in Finn's moans from the center platform, where he thrusts into the new girl--Rose--his eyes glassy with pleasure.

_If one is cut, all bleed. We feel it. We know it._

She says nothing else, only strolls toward Finn, and Rose, folding her long body into one of the surrounding chairs and making herself comfortable.

*******

The third is a boy, no more than sixteen, who wears of necklace of teeth--no two the same size or color--and carries a knife whittled from bone. His eyes are empty as he offers her passage out of Niima, keys to an apartment in the city. He smiles grimly when she refuses and leaves at the foot of her chaise her a smaller version of his own knife.

The fourth is an older man, face striped with scars. He offers to fuck her, since the boss won't, though Rey doubts that was part of his mission. He tells her to give up. She tells him to go fuck himself, which makes him laugh.

The fifth is a mountain of a man, who says nothing, but whose mind brushes against hers, passing along images of Kylo wrapped around woman after woman, his pale skin damp with sweat and his face twisted in ecstasy. She can hear the slap of bare skin, desperate moans. Rey gives him a single image to take to his master: Kylo carrying her naked body in his arms, his features full of concern and vengeance and something so very soft. The silent man smiles as he leaves her.

The sixth is a woman with angry eyes and a silver and black hood. She will take Rey to an island, she says, her lip curling in disdain as she toys with a curved looking blade she's slung on her hip. In her head, she imagines bringing the blade through the air in a graceful arc, sees that pretty long neck neatly bisected, the troublesome hazel eyes of her prey wide with surprise and empty of life. Rey stares at the woman, jaw clenched with determination, tired of waiting for a man who doesn't seem to want her. 

Then, just as they started, they stop coming. A week stretches to two. In Rey's chest, something breaks; it bleeds.

*******

The club is crowded most nights now, full of people eager to see if Maz can outdo Plutt, if she has any new tricks to turn. Their minds press against Rey like the relentless tide, they erode her strength until pushing them away becomes like trying to turn back waves--futile and exhausting. She lets them stand longer than she should, their greedy eyes violating her body as their thoughts invade her mind. 

> _Want her. Want to touch. To taste. To own...._
> 
> _I'm prettier than her, can't understand why he comes here to look at her, skinny bitch, if only I..._
> 
> _Why can't I do it? Just a little thing. Get hard and push in and then no one will say anything about Tom and me. Just friends. Just close my eyes and push in...._
> 
> _So soft, all of those curves and valleys. So innocent and I just know she would scream so prettily when I..._

It is harder to care about any of it now that she doesn't dream of the ocean or of verdant, green jungles, now that she doesn't see his shadow or feel his hungry gaze on her skin. He doesn't want her, isn't coming. There had been a dream but now it is dead, and everything left is dull and empty and muted. Better to not remember. Better to let it go. But there is something awake in her that demands attention, something that will not go back to sleep, will not die with the dream; it is starved for touch, for affection, for satisfaction.

It makes her ache until she almost lets someone touch her. He is big and dark eyed and beautiful, and she thinks she could pretend it is _him,_ that she could screw her eyes closed and cross that line--the one she's drawn in the sand over and over again--and feel him move insider her. Maybe that would quiet this insistent _want_. She comes so close, the man's fingertips hovering in the air just above her breast, her heart throbbing just centimeters away, screaming grief and loneliness and defiance with every beat. When she pushes him away, she almost regrets it, almost calls him back. Her body belongs to no one, her heart less so. Why shouldn't she find release? Why shouldn't she find comfort in this pale imitation of connection?

 _Next time, I will_ , she whispers to the desert, _next time._

_*******_

She feels him before she sees him; it's like the too-still moment before the sandstorm appears on the horizon. Everything in her is straining toward that unnatural silence, singing with a heightened awareness. 

The club fades to gray. The moans and chatter dim to a dull hush. There is only the big man who finally appears in the doorway, his eyes locked on her. There is only the sound of his breath and his heartbeat and his footsteps bringing him ever closer. 

The way he moves is like a sand cat stalking a hare. Purposeful. Dangerous. Vaguely amused. He takes his time and she feels his mind brushing against hers, a feather across sensitive skin; it makes her squirm with a need for more, always more. "Little one." His voice resonates through her, when they are close enough for words, its vibrations going straight to some hidden, long-neglected place.

"What do you want?" She means for it to sound defiant, but it sounds more like an offering, like a prayer.

If possible, his eyes grow even darker--his gaze devours her as it greedily rakes across her body, as though the hunger that permeates the air between them is an answer to her question. And maybe it is. "We had a deal." She nods. "Unless you've changed your mind," he reaches out to trace small circles over one knee, the too-light touch making her the muscles in her abdomen clench and ache. 

"No--I didn't change my mind," she whispers. He hums quietly in approval, and the gentle circling of his fingertips drifts upward--stroking and teasing and setting her every nerve ending ablaze with sensation that is somehow both not enough and too much. In a single, graceful move, he is on her platform, seated on the edge of her chair, leaning over her, his lips skimming across the sensitive skin of her throat. Her breath hitches as his tongue traces the shell of her ear, "We--we--could go somewhere else--"

"I thought," he rumbles against her ear, "that you wanted this. You've been so _stubborn_ about working here. Thinking about taking someone else, letting them have what is _mine._ " His fingers brush against the apex of her thighs and she lets out a strangled moan at finally having him touch her there. His hand stills, just barely pressing against her small bundle of nerves, fingers drenched with her need; her hips buck toward him, seeking more pressure, more movement, more of him. "Soaked. You're soaked for me. Is this what you want everyone to see? You falling apart on my fingers, against my mouth? You cumming as I fuck you into this chaise?" Slowly, tortuously, his fingers begin to circle her clit as his mouth begins its languid path down her neck, across her collarbone, the softness of his plush lips in contrast to the sharp reproach she can feel simmering beneath the surface. 

He is not used to being defied. He is not used to giving in. 

"I don't--" she gasps, as one of his long, thick fingers dips inside her entrance, "I--I--don't want them to see--only you."

Like marionettes, every head in the club snaps toward the entrance, pointedly staring away from Rey. "You'll have to be quiet, though," Kylo murmurs against her skin as he kisses and nips his way to the rosy peak of her breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth then releasing it with a noisy _smack_ , "they can still hear everything." He turns his attentions to her other breast, kneading and pinching and sucking, his fingers flexing deep inside her, until she's quivering with need, with an instinct she cannot understand that coils her muscles tight like she's reaching, always reaching for something.

And then he stops, a whine issuing from her lips before she can remember that she is supposed to be being quiet. "Frustrating, isn't it," he drawls against her skin, "when people don't do what you want them to do." She knows that it is her denial of his wishes that makes his eyes snap with dark energy like that, that he hates how he's been forced to bend to her instead of the other way around. Even if she couldn't see it in his thoughts, it is there in the tightness in his jaw, in the hard edges his smirk. 

But something rises in her in response, born of the long weeks of needing, of years of waiting for people who never came back. She narrows her eyes at him: "Frustrating when people leave you wanting," she snaps, "when people abandon you. When they don't want you." 

It happens too fast for her to follow, but her knees are suddenly thrust apart and he moves over her to rest between them, his amber eyes both softer and more intense as he stares at her. "For your safety, not because I didn't want you. I...I'm not good," he runs one massive hand through his dark hair, "but I fucking want you." He ducks his head to plant a kiss against one knee, then the other, looking up at her as he traces his tongue up her inner thigh, watching her eyes widen. "I can't stop wanting you," he murmurs, kissing the top of her mound, "dreaming about you--needing you." Her mouth pops open in a little "oh" of pleasure as he licks a long, hot stripe up her sex, then parts her folds to press against her entrance. Her hips buck off the chaise and he plants a hand across her abdomen, forcing her down, forcing her to stay still and accept the waves of pleasure that course through her as he circles her clit with his tongue, as he laps at her center like a man starved.

She should feel self-conscious; there are people everywhere and he has his face buried between her legs, has her clit rolling between his lips. He could lose his hold on them and they could all turn to see her, thighs wet and cheeks flushed and spread wide for this man. It should matter, would have mattered once, but now her world is narrowed to where his lips move against her, where his tongue delves into hidden places, every movement making her nerves sing with white-hot pleasure. It rolls through her, remakes her. The feeling of something tightening, something coiling with tension, is back, and she can only surrender to it, only pray that whatever is building deep inside her doesn't shatter her completely. Or that maybe it will. 

What a beautiful way to break. 

When he adds a finger, then two, pumping in and out of her, stroking her inner walls in a way that makes her legs shake, that makes her vision black, that makes her feel like she's close, so close, to something beautiful and dangerous and breathtaking--spiraling upwards, up, up--her fingers twine through his waves, pulling him closer, needing him closer. She chases the sensation, running toward it, reaching for it, grinding down against where he sucks and laps and licks. He moans, the vibrations travelling deep inside her, as his hips thrust against the soft plush of the seat. "I..." she gasps, unable to form a full thought, unsure what she even means to say. And then he is sucking her deep into his mouth, cheeks hollowing, consuming her, devouring her, and she is so close, so close, so close; everything is bright and full of electricity and straining, reaching, needing, until she explodes into fractals of light, every part of her body soaring, every fiber of her being suffused with waves of _yes_ and _too much_ and _more_ _._

He chases her, wringing every last shiver of pleasure from her body, his tongue moving against her like a man possessed. Their eyes meet, his hungry and possessive and awe-filled, his chin wet with her. "We're leaving," he rasps, pulling her to him, scooping her up in his arms as he had so many weeks ago. Her body feels heavy with release, warm and pliant; she nods and buries her face in the crook of his neck. "Don't think for a minute we're done, though."

She shivers against him, thighs pressed tightly together.

He carries her through the crowd, his arms thick and strong around her, his thoughts full of dark promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 💜 Your comments are the caffeine in my coffee 💜


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